Valtteri Bottas finally had a smooth first day of the weekend, after many difficult Fridays. The Alfa Romeo F1 driver is happy to return to Monza and hopes to have a good weekend there.
“It feels good to be here, it’s a good track, and it’s even better because the car looked quite good today, much better than what we had in the last races, so it’s promising for Sunday,” Bottas said.
The fact that his mechanics worked on the car during testing was unrelated to a problem: « Nothing too worrying, we still have details of settings to study, but it’s not far. We don’t have to change everything, we’ll just try to find any small gain. »
With 15 penalty places, he hopes to be able to get back in the race: « The pace was good, I think the pace will be better than the place from where you start, and on this circuit it should be possible to come back. »
Zhou confirms Alfa Romeo F1 progress
Guanyu Zhou had a busy day but he too hopes for progress on the rest of the weekend, and especially compared to the previous races: « It was intense, and at the same time it’s very special, it’s the team’s home race, and we hope to have a better weekend than the previous races. »
« It was much better than Zandvoort, we were competitive from the start which was good to see. And on the other hand it’s super tight, two tenths could decide whether you go to Q2 or Q3. »
The Chinese hopes to take advantage of the penalties on the grid to start from the top 10 and aim for points: « It could be an intense day tomorrow, the session was complicated with several sets of tires and the red flag, but I’m quite satisfied so far. »
« We could be in a good window on Sunday, which I wanted to see, because at Spa I was one of the guys who had a penalty and I could have started in the top 10. We must have a good qualification in front of those who don’t have a penalty and fight from there. »
